


Silver

by HermitLibrary_Archivist



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Dub-con verging on Non-con, F/M, Season/Series 02, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-26
Updated: 2008-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 17:06:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4884862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermitLibrary_Archivist/pseuds/HermitLibrary_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>by Zelda</p>
<p>Travis comes to Exbar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Judith and Aralias, the archivists: This story was originally archived at [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Hermit_Library), which was closed due to maintenance costs and lack of time. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2015. We posted announcements about the move and emailed authors as we imported, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Hermit.org Blake's 7 Library collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hermitlibrary/profile). 
> 
> This work has been backdated to 26th of May 2008, which is the last date the Hermit.org archive was updated, not the date this fic was written. In some cases, fics can be dated more precisely by searching for the zine they were originally published in on [Fanlore](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Main_Page).
> 
> **Original Author's Notes:**
> 
> Previously published in the 'Freedom City' mailing list.

Inga looked up in the grey morning, and saw the light in the sky, a smear of white. It was the first one she had seen in five years or more, but right now she was too hungry to care very much, to consider all the possibilities. She did stop and squint up at it, as it passed overhead, took more heed of it than any other animal in the thicket did. Then she bent down again to her work, to the task of surviving.

Naturally there was no sound until well after the light had fallen out of sight, dropped down over the high horizon. And the sound when it came was more underfoot than overhead, a shiver in the dust and the riverbed rock. Inga paid it no mind. She was picking red berries from the bushes that grew thick in this narrow sharp elbow of the valley, half an hour's walk downstream from her home and an hour more to the nearest of their neighbours beyond. She was eating some of them, because after all it would not do to faint, but putting most of them in the bucket, for later, for sharing, for the inhospitable season coming soon.

By the time the sun had moved up into the middle of the sky, she had her bucket half full, and the only berries left were inedibly green. So she straightened, and stretched, and made her way home, with the sun almost warm on her shoulders and head.

The rest of the afternoon passed by in a mindless daydream, in performing all the dull routines of subsistence living. Thoughts of the odd phenomenon never even crossed her mind again, until someone came home for her to share it with.

It was early evening, by the time he came back, and she had supper waiting. Put the hot bowl down in front of him, wishing that it were more. "I saw a light in the sky this morning," she said to him.

He paused just a moment with the spoon halfway up to his mouth, and fixed her with that look, for just a moment, the one that made her nervous, always made her doubt whatever it was she might have been about to say. "A meteor, maybe," she said, with an anxious smile.

"Maybe," he said, and went back to cleaning out his bowl.

They ate in silence for a while.

"I think there'll be a lot more berries before it really freezes," she said hopefully, smearing up the last of her portion of the stew with a thorough finger. "I'll go back tomorrow, I think."

He put his bowl down. "I'm going out to check snares," he said. Out of the blue, as the saying goes. He'd just been off doing that all day, she was almost sure--but, best not to ask.

"I hope you find something, Father," she said, to his back as he stooped to leave the dugout.

She gathered up the bowls and the spoons from the table, and the pot, and went down to the river to wash them clean. It was chilly, but she couldn't be bothered to put on her coat when she'd only get it wet, and then she'd have to slog home with it wet.

Dishes were easy to do, and so they were done despite the fact that they were not particularly vital to survival. Their cleanliness would not be a deciding factor, given the circumstances. Doing the dishes each evening was really more habit than anything else, almost a religious ritual, a respectful nod to her antiseptic ancestors.

Inga had been born here, of course, not exiled from civilized Earth as her father had been. She was at home on this planet, in this small habitable crack in its surface at least, to a degree he never would be. But it had been civilized here when she was young, when her morals and manners were learned. Or if not civilized, it had always held out the promise of civilization, the way a green berry promises sweetness. The way the human mind promises itself that this year there'll be no frost. Not this year. Not if I'm good.

And that night, at least, there was no frost. There was at least one more day of berries to be had.

***

She started out in the morning to pick them, as she had said she would, but her father, who must have been sleeping very lightly, awakened and asked her not to, asked her to help him with repairing the chicken coop. After they had finished that task she prepared to set off, in the afternoon, with just enough time, if she hurried, to get there and pick some and get back again, before dusk made it risky to walk on the rocks by the river.

He was waiting outside when she left the dugout. "Roof needs mending again," he told her.

She swung the empty bucket. "Yes, Father," she said. "I'll help you when I get back."

"Oh, you can afford to miss a day," he said.

"No I can't," she replied, puzzled. "We can't. You know we can't."

He pressed his lips together, shook his head. "Be careful, Inga," he said. "Don't go down to the river."

She smiled, and kissed his cheek, and hurried away.

A fair few more berries had ripened, she found. A good third of a bucket full. The plants were hurrying. They knew that they were running out of time. She picked until she knew she would run out of light if she lingered, and then she started back home.

As she came to the edge of the thicket just down from their dugout, almost home, she looked down and saw something shiny half-buried in the sand beside the river, the place where she usually went to wash dishes. She saw something silver gleaming in the grey light of the sinking sun. Probably an old food wrapper. They still washed up on occasion, to torment an empty stomach; they surfaced with every wrinkle licked clean by the wind, and the river, and the passage of time. Nevertheless, one had to check, one always had to make absolutely sure. She hung her bucket of berries from a branch before she jumped down from the knee-high embankment, onto the little patch of sand, and stooped, reached down to pick up the silver scrap. It was heavier than it should be.

It was full.

She stood up, clutched the sealed solid package tight, and her heart beat faster. It had been years since she had seen such a thing, except in dreams. In her dreams she would frequently find stacks of rations she'd somehow forgotten about all this time, and then of course would come the fear of having to share it, the challenge of concealing it, the guilt. Such is life, at least in dreams.

She clutched the package tight, and peered down at the sand around her, looking for evidence of more.

She noticed a footprint, heavy tread, beside the hole where the package had been. And then a trick of the eye and the trail became so obvious, the scuffs where the rest of the prints had been haphazardly swept away, as the trapper had walked backwards, back to the embankment. She had a quick sick vision of a rabbit in the snare, scrawny screaming future stew and skin.

Then a low voice said, "Hello, little girl," and a foot, a boot with heavy tread, came up and hooked her legs out from under her.

She fell forward, catching herself with her hands, and felt the knee between her shoulderblades, and felt the barrel of the gun against her temple when she turned her head to the side and spat out sand.

"What's your name?" asked the voice.

"Ushton, Inga Ushton," she said, as the knee dug in harder.

"Well, well," said the voice. "How very fortunate for you. All right, get up." The weight was removed from her back, and a hand around her arm hauled her back up onto her feet. She was still holding onto the package of food. She looked at the man, built heavy and dressed in odd costume--black with yellow bits and an oxygen mask hanging down. "I think we've got her," he said, to the communication device in his hand. "Tell the others, and let's get back up there before it gets dark." Then he turned to her. "Come on, Inga, let's go."

She tried to pull free. The man responded by twisting her arm until she screamed, and a little bit more, and he pushed her forward as he did, walking, stumbling. The food packet fell, and he kicked it into the river as he passed. "I'll break your fucking arm, little girl," he said, "I'll twist it till the bone comes out through the skin, and I'll break it again when it does. Do you understand, Inga?"

"Yes," she said, gasped. He pushed her up onto the embankment and into the thicket. She could hear a buzzing insect sound growing quickly louder, and branches smashing all around, and soon bright headlights could be seen in the gloom of the shadow of the cliffs.

The man behind the wheel of the vehicle was dressed the same as her captor, except that the bits were red instead of yellow. Some kind of company uniform, perhaps. Almost looked Federation. "You can sit on my lap if there's not enough room," her captor said, pushing her into the passenger seat and squeezing in beside.

"You can put your head in my lap if your face gets cold," the driver grinned, and started the vehicle moving again even before his companion had slammed the passenger door. Spun a tight circle and drove back the way it had come, following the river for several bends until they reached the old road that led up to the tower.

"Put your mask on, Molok," the passenger said, when they were about halfway up. "I don't want you passing out at the wheel." The driver took his left hand from the wheel and fumbled the mask from his chest up over his face, without ever reducing speed. The passenger put his own mask on with two-handed ease. "What about her?" he asked, voice distorted by the mask and the changing composition of the atmosphere.

"Fuck her," said the driver.

The passenger said something, but Inga couldn't make it out.

The air at the top was not actually unbreathable, she found, just thin. You wouldn't want to exert yourself. And it was cold. She shivered. "I'll keep you warm," the passenger said.

She wondered if she could have pinpointed her home down in the valley, if it had still been light by the time they got up to the top. Probably not.

The vehicle stopped by the base of the tower, and the two men got out, the passenger dragging her behind him. The driver walked ahead and opened the outside door of the airlock by rattling the vandalized keyboard that hung loose beside it. Once inside he pushed the door closed with the palms of his hands, and then pushed the green button on the intercom beside the inner door. "Eighteen, eighteen," he said, and the door slid open. The two men took off their masks.

"Come in, Inga, sit down, make yourself at home," the passenger said. "Take off your coat. You're going to be here for a while."

"Mm, yes, have a seat," said the man who had opened the door. Dressed in the same sort of coverall as the other two were. He was playing with a knife. "Please."

Inga sat down. My father will be getting worried. No, don't say that, don't say anything. She looked around. The room was wonderfully warm compared to the air outside, and lit up with electric lights, and full of electric sounds. The overall ambience filled her with an odd nostalgia for her childhood. There had been so much food then, at least there had been for her.

"Where's he?" the driver asked the man with the knife.

"Up top."

"Did you tell him we were here?" the driver asked.

The knife man looked down, concentrated on pushing a cuticle back with the point of his blade. "He'll figure it out."

"No hurry," the passenger said. "I think we deserve a break. She didn't want to come, you know. I think she may still be plotting to get away."

"Well if she tries, we'll just have to cut her hamstrings," the knife man said, cheerfully, and came near and looked down at her clenched in the chair, and never let off picking at his nails. "Do you know what those are, Inga? Do you want me to show you?"

"He's a gifted surgeon," the passenger said to her, to all of them, and laughed. "Take off your boots and he'll show you."

"Take off your trousers," the knife man said.

She didn't move. The passenger grabbed her arm and pulled her up out of the chair, and the driver came forward and yanked her trousers down, the drawstring tight as it was pulled over her hips, pulled down around her knees. Then the passenger shoved her down onto the chair again.

I saw a light in the sky, she thought. Distanced herself from the helpless fear here. He said not to go down to the river, but I did.

The knife man leaned in close to her. "So shy," he said. "Are you a virgin, Inga?"

She didn't answer.

"I think she is," the driver said. "I think she needs corrective surgery."

The knife man moved around behind her, and bent over her shoulder, and drew the knife blade slowly, lightly, up her thigh, from her knee to the hem of her knitted underwear. Blood welled up evenly all along the line, red beads the size of poppyseeds. She made a terrified sound. The driver grinned.

"Spread your legs," the knife man murmured in her ear. She didn't. She clamped them together even tighter.

The driver stepped forward and grabbed her knees, and wrenched them apart.

Then the passenger cleared his throat in such a way that the knife man jerked away, and his blade disappeared, and the driver quickly stepped back from her, and she pressed her knees together again. "Pull them up," someone hissed, and someone else did.

A door on the far side of the room slid open, and a man stepped out of the elevator there, and turned and walked over to where the crowd had gathered.

She stared up at him as he moved into focus. "Ah, Inga, you're here, good," he said, acknowledging her with a quick nod. And she stared. He was dressed all in black like the others, and his costume, like theirs, could be some sort of Federation uniform. She wasn't sure, she hadn't seen them since she was a child, and even when she was a child her eyesight had not been all that good, things were just blurs at any distance. And her parents had done their very best to avoid close encounters with anyone wearing a uniform. Coincidentally or not, she had survived, at least this long. She had outlived most of the children born here.

She became aware that she was staring, and tried not to. She made herself look at his insignia, not his face. That wasn't polite, her mother had taught her it wasn't polite. Though he was pretty enough despite the patch, and he looked down at her in a way that suggested her response would not make much of an impact, one way or the other, on his self-esteem.

Who are you? No, that wouldn't be polite either.

"Why don't we all go up to the room at the top," the man in the uniform said. "Have something to eat. Inga, are you hungry?"

She nodded.

"My name is Travis, by the way," he said to her, as he ushered her into the elevator. His voice was soft, quiet, calm. "I don't imagine any of these ones would ever refer to me by my right name behind my back." The others laughed as they crowded in, pushed her back against the wall, pushed up against her.

The room at the top, which was actually second from the top, according to the elevator lights, was a windowless storage area. Half of it was empty, the stock presumably having been too expensive to leave behind, but what wealth they had left was unbelievable, to Inga's eyes at least. Shelves full of stacks of silver packages. Worth much more to her than gold.

The leader--Travis, Travis--took one of the many packages from one of the many shelves and brought it over to the folding table someone had unfolded in the middle of the empty side of the room, while the other three sat down on the folding chairs set up all around it. The knife man smiled and sliced the package open, and crooked his finger at her.

She came to the table and sat down with them, and she dug into the slab of--she squinted at the package--amino-enriched yeast concentrate, even knowing that it was meant to be watered down a lot, knowing that this much of it would probably make her sick. She crumbled it into her mouth, licked the salty satisfying residue from her fingers. With the knife man staring. But she was unable, in that ecstatic moment, to be afraid. Forced herself to drink half a glass of water before she ate any more.

"They overstocked this place," Travis said to her, leaning over and picking a little corner off the big bar of yeast, rolling it into a ball between his fingers. "The amount of food here is ridiculous. Thought they'd be here longer, I suppose. And there's more in the living quarters. Food, medical supplies, we could all spend our lives here, and a hundred other people could as well, and here it is all going to waste." He flicked the little ball of food from his fingers, onto the floor somewhere, casually.

She stared at him, stunned, still savouring the flavour of the food on her tongue. She would have been sure this must all be a dream, if her dreams had ever been half so grand in scale.

"I can do so much for you, and you just have to do one little thing for me."

"What?" she asked.

"Bait a trap," he said.

"What do you mean?"

He moved away from the table. "Come here," he said to her. "Stand here." She obeyed. "Molok, you have the camera ready?" The driver nodded, grinned.

"Look pathetic," Travis said. "You seem to be very good at that." The driver laughed.

Travis cleared his throat, composed himself. "Record," he said to the driver, who pressed the proper button obediently.

"Blake," Travis said to the camera. Whatever came immediately after, she didn't manage to take it in.

"Here she is," Travis said, and Molok pointed the camera at her. "Her name is Inga, if you remember." Yes, he apparently did mean that Blake, her cousin, her Blake. Although she hadn't really been in much doubt about that.

"Blake, this is not a trick," Travis said. She could see that he'd rehearsed the speech. "Like yourself, I am now a fugitive from the Federation."

Yet he still wears the uniform. And the insignia. In front of the camera, while he says he's against them.

"Blake, the girl is safe if you come to Exbar within twenty-five time units."

The girl is safe. And this is not a trick. It didn't reassure her, all in all.

"If you do not come, the girl, regretfully, dies," he said to the camera. Paused a moment for dramatic emphasis. "Stop record," he said to the cameraman. Then he turned to the other two. "Take it up, send it out, do it exactly as I told you. Don't fuck around, the security cameras are on, you know." He leaned back and watched them elbow each other aside in their headlong rush for the elevator. "Idiots," he hissed. It should have been a comedy routine.

The elevator door slid shut. Travis smiled wide, and the other man smiled back, even wider. "Now all we have to do is wait," Travis said.

Inga felt sick to her overfull stomach. Molok shoved her toward the table, and indicated that it would be best that she sit.

"They'd better do it right or they'll be next on the block," Travis muttered.

"They must be just shitting themselves," Molok said with a grin.

"Are you saying you knew they were on?" Travis asked him, and the grin disappeared. Replaced by a rather tense silence.

After what seemed like a very long while, Molok pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket and dropped it on the table, some sort of conciliatory gesture. They were wrapped in plastic like everything else here, and she saw that they were backed with the arrowhead symbol of the Federation, in silver and gold and glossy black.

Travis shook his head, but he smiled, you could see that all had been forgiven. "I'm going to get some sleep," he said to Molok. "Go down. Keep watch. And tell Garrett to come in."

Molok stood up and stretched and began to move toward the elevator door. "And the others?" he asked, over his shoulder.

Travis shrugged. "Sort it out amongst yourselves." Molok grinned again, and stepped into the elevator.

After the door had closed, Travis opened the panel beside it and pushed one of the buttons there. "It's locked from the inside now," he said, with his back to her. "They can't get in." Came back to the table, sat down again, stretched out his legs, and folded his arms, and fixed his gaze on nothing.

Blake. A name from the days of electricity, and food, and the sound of the mining equipment always grinding deeper into the valley walls.

Inga looked down and saw that she had picked the plastic wrapper off the deck of cards Molok had left.

Travis picked them up and started fiddling with them, shuffling, fanning, fidgeting. That comforted her somewhat, for no good reason.

She looked him in the eye. Cool pinprick pupil, disengaged. "I haven't seen Roj Blake since--I haven't seen him in years. Many, many years," she said.

"I know," Travis said. "He told us--" Turning a card over and over in his hand, and the sentence caught momentarily on the back side of it, all that gold and silver pride and power. Then he flipped the face toward himself again. "He told *them* all about you. Your parents. Your planet. What, where, when. He devoted a great deal of thought to you, Inga." He looked up at her as he shuffled the cards. "I must say, having met you, I still have no idea why."

She paid no mind to that petty jab. She hunched over and studied the surface of the table, picked up a card and turned it over, examined its markings, uncomprehending. "I can't even remember his face. I can't. I was only a child when I saw him last," she said.

"I'm sure he put a lot of ideas into your head, nevertheless."

She looked at his silver insignia. Not at his face, not into his icewater eye. "Ideas about the Federation," she said, tentative, testing. Turned the card over again and left it like that, silver and gold.

Travis pursed his lips. Made a face. "Don't fret about that, I'm no friend of the Federation. Nor am I a friend of Blake's. I'm a friend of yours, though, Inga, aren't I?" He arched his eyebrow, rolled his eye toward the shelves full of food.

She looked at the shelves and nodded unhappily.

"So. Are you a friend of his?" Travis asked.

Inga blinked. "He's my cousin," she said.

Travis smiled.

Inga hung her head, looked down at her hands in her lap. Took note of the way her wrist ached, where the passenger had twisted it. Centered herself on the pain, before she spoke. "How long do I have?"

"You should go to sleep, Inga. There's nothing you can do. I brought some blankets up from the living quarters." He waved his hand at an armload of plastic-wrapped packages stacked against the wall.

She stared at him. Met his eye, grey as sky, rude or not. "How are you going to do it? Are you going to shoot me?"

"Of course not. He'll come."

"He's not that stupid."

Travis smiled. "He's exactly that stupid."

She knew he was right. He would come if he was able. But his ship could crash, something could break down, so many things could prevent him arriving within the allotted time, which seemed ridiculously short. Or he might not receive the message, or somebody might decide it was best that he not receive it. That's what I'd decide, she thought, if I were with him. Whoever he's with. I wouldn't want him to go.

I don't want him to come.

I *shouldn't* want him to come. They are obviously trading my life for his, it *is* a trick, he said so himself, a trap. Anyone, anyone can see it's a trick. And whatever Blake is doing these days must be important, to have got himself such enemies. His life must be worth much more than mine.

He won't come. I want him to. He won't.

"What if he can't?" she asked.

Travis glared at her, tired of her talk now, irritated. Then smiled. "Here, I'll show you. Come here, Inga." She walked over to where he was sitting, and he held up his gloved hand, the left, with the big yellow bauble. "Touch it." She did, gently, fingertips. He rolled his eye. She squeezed. It was hard, with strange sharp corners, and as cold as the room. Presumably a prosthesis.

"Your loving cousin did this to me," he said, and pulled his hand away, began to undo the top of his uniform. "Not that I mind, really. Actually I've got a lot to thank him for." She stepped back, glanced away, as he pulled his arms out of the sleeves, turning them inside-out, and let the whole thing flop down behind him. A tight black undershirt covered his chest, and he'd managed to keep the glove on somehow, but his arms were bare, and he lifted them, spread them wide, in traditional crucifixion pose. "Come back, Inga, I'm trying to show you. Do you see this?" A metal cylinder set into the white plastic of the left upper arm. "That's the power cell, this is the mechanism--well, it's all part of the device, I suppose. It's called a laseron destroyer. It's very powerful. Very expensive."

He looked very pleased with himself.

Inga blinked.

Travis rolled his eye, lowered his arms, crossed them. "It's a weapon, Inga. It's a gun."

Inga nodded.

"Now, listen, Inga, if your hero, your saviour, if Blake does not come, and I know he will, but supposing he doesn't, well then, Inga," he said soothingly, "I will take you outside and make you kneel at the edge of the cliff out there, Inga, and I will place this wonderful device of mine against the back of your head, and I will fire." He leaned back, licked his lips. "Do you have any other questions?"

The tears were welling up, but she fought them back, knowing once she started crying she wouldn't be able to stop. "I didn't do anything," she said to him. "I didn't do anything."

"No," he agreed. "Now, as I told you before, I think you should get some sleep."

He stood up, walked over to the stack of packages and ripped one open. It inhaled and expanded as air was allowed in, and the thick folded blanket pushed out through the ruptured seam like a hernia. Ripped open another.

"Are you going to sleep with me?" she asked.

He turned and looked at her, and appeared genuinely surprised by the question for a second, and then he smirked. "I'm afraid that wouldn't make it any more difficult for me to kill you," he said. "I'm better trained than that."

She felt the tickling ghost of the knife tip cold sharp slicing its way up her thigh, and anticipated again the awful pain of it entering her. "I just wondered," she said, "I just wanted to know, I wanted to tell you I wouldn't, wouldn't fight--" She was gagging on the lump in her throat.

"No? You wouldn't fight?" He grinned, like Molok, and came over to her, stood close. "How much difference do you think that would make?" With his right hand he caught hold of her wrist and pulled her hand toward him, pressed it against his body, his groin. His fingers were cold, and chapped dry by the manufactured air, and dug in hard, cut off the blood, and she was sure the little bones there would break. Or maybe they had already broken. They ground against each other, like rough river rock. Her wrist was her world, all else was forgotten, her wrist was the only thing of consequence. She gritted her teeth and pulled her hand back, and tried to free herself, twist out of his grasp. "Anyhow, what if I want you to fight?" he asked. His tone of voice was incongruously playful. He squeezed harder.

She clenched her hand into a white-knuckled fist and slammed it suddenly forward, full force, a punch which, though quickly arrested, still impacted with sufficient force to make him grunt, and let go of her wrist. She stepped back but he stepped forward faster, and he shoved her, knocked her off her feet, down onto the floor.

He glared at her, tight-lipped, not viciously playful any longer, not at all. "All right," he said, walking over to the elevator door, unlocking it. "You can find someplace else to sleep. Good luck." He pushed the red button and the door slid open, and the elevator was there, waiting.

Inga shook her head and stayed sitting on the floor. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said. He walked to her and grabbed her wrist again, this time to drag her toward the elevator. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she screamed, and wrapped her free arm around his leg, slid her free hand up the inside of his thigh. He took several steps backward, toward the elevator, still holding her wrist, but she kept pace with him, on her knees, kept her other hand where it was, and when he stopped moving she raised herself up and pressed her face into his abdomen, mostly the smell of chalk-dust, faint smell of his skin beneath. The tears finally started, ran heavy from her eyes, and she found it was actually somewhat of a relief to cry.

And he had stopped moving toward the door. Toward them, the others. That was a relief as well. She opened her mouth, ran the tip of her tongue up over the dusty grooves of the crotch of his uniform, and craned her neck to look up as she did, trying to see his face.

He looked back, looked down at her, grinning, unequivocally victorious. Then he grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her to her feet, scrambling and wincing and instinctively clutching at him for support. For several sick seconds she was certain he would push her out the elevator door all the same. And they would all be waiting, they would be awake and bored and waiting.

She reached out, mindless cornered fear, touched his thigh, slid her palm up to cup his crotch, and she could feel the streak of saliva there, evaporating rapidly. She rubbed at it, as though trying to get rid of a stain.

He let go of her hair, and stepped away. "I'm not interested," he said. Contemptuous. The very idea so utterly beneath him. "I just wanted to see how serious you were."

She sobbed, choked on the bile in the back of her throat, and the tears splashed down onto the floor. "I'm serious, I am serious."

He turned on his heel and crossed the floor, went into the lavatory. When he came out a few minutes later he was holding a little blue bottle of pills. "Take one of these, put it under your tongue, it'll help you sleep. Which will help *me* sleep. And we'll all be happier in the morning."

He slid a pill out of the bottle and held it between the thumb and finger of his left hand. She watched intrigued despite all else by how delicately the black fingertips picked up and held that little bit of white. "Open your mouth." She pressed her lips together, stepped back as he stepped toward her. Part of her said obey, it's easier, but part of her was too animal afraid to do anything but keep fighting all the way.

He didn't ask again, just grabbed her hair again and held her close, held her still while the fingers with the pill shoved in between her lips, and she let her mouth be opened, fearing something would break, some part of her would be broken, painfully, if she didn't. His gloved fingers left a muddy metal taste in her mouth, as he pushed the pill in, and it dissolved almost instantly, and she was still crying, silently, but already drifting, sweetly sleepy, drifting away.

***

She woke up curled in the corner like a dog in a pile of thick blankets. The plastic in which they'd been sealed all these cold years was scattered all over the floor, along with a variety of food packets, empty and full and partly full. At the table there was some kind of card game going on, Travis and the knife man and a man she hadn't seen yesterday. If it had been yesterday. Garrett.

She wished there were windows. How long had it been? Her bladder was bursting full, and her mouth was dry.

She pushed the pile of blankets off and got to her feet, felt stiff and unbalanced, and their discussion of the card game stopped while they all glanced over at her. She wanted to throw up, curl up, cry, but the physical need won out over such notions for the moment, and she made her way, walked past them, toward the toilet.

"She looks sore," Garrett said. To her, more than to the others.

"Was she a virgin, Commander?" the knife man asked, but his eyes were on her, not on Travis.

"I doubt it," Garrett said. "I'll bet the old man's been doing her for years. That old bastard looked too fucking serene to be celibate. Probably taught her all the tricks of the trade. Am I right, Inga?"

"Mm. So, do I get my turn tonight?"

She closed the door, latched it, trying not to let the tears start again. She used the toilet, she remembered this kind of toilet, again it made her feel vaguely as though she were a child again. Then she looked at herself in the mirror, eyelids swollen, translucent like burn blisters, and the smearing of tears and dust made the rest of her face look like it had been deliberately, badly, painted.

She remembered faucets, too. She ran the water, hot and cold, and washed her face, her hands, her arms, washed the blood off of her leg, and found that under it the cut had virtually disappeared. Surely her reaction had been out of all proportion to the severity of the injury. She had displayed great natural stupidity, weakness, cowardice. Nothing worth Blake's life. Not that he would come.

He's already on his way.

Her wrist was swollen and emitting little twinges in time to the rhythm of her heart. It felt better when she held it in cold water. She drank cold water, too, and rinsed her mouth out with cold water. Wondered how long they would let her stay in here, whether they would think she was up to something. Whether it would eventually worry them enough to come and investigate.

The mirror was unbreakable. The fixtures were firmly fixed.

The medicine cupboard was locked, of course, and very securely, too.

She wished there were windows. Wondered how much time had passed, and how much there was left. Wondered where her father was, whether he knew. She hoped he didn't, she hoped he never would.

The old man. Looked too serene.

The tears began to flow again.

When, eventually, she went to open the door, when she was unable to stand waiting any longer for them to come banging, threatening, swearing at her, she found that it wouldn't open. It had been locked from the outside, somehow.

She sat on the rim of the toilet for a while, and tried to remember Blake. What he looked like. Tall, well of course, everyone had been tall then. The colour of his eyes. Not grey. Softer. His face, smile, soft, softer than Travis, but when she tried she could only see Travis, all black jagged shards of broken glass, glass smashed on the rocks and hidden in the sand. You don't even feel it when it sticks into you, deep, sharp, fast. You only feel it when you pull it out, and the blood runs out like water, and the sand grinds in when you walk.

The shape of his body. The colour of his eyes. Put your bare foot in the icy stream, watch the red ribbons of blood run away.

Later her stomach began to grind with hunger, and it was a comfort, it was a familiar kind of pain. Later she numbed her wrist in cold water again, and some time after that she curled up on the floor and fell into a light undrugged sleep, in which she dreamed about searching in dangerous sand for bright shiny packets of food.

***

Some unknown time later the door slid open, and she scrambled upright, scrambled back until she bumped into the wall beside the toilet. "You want to watch?" Molok asked, undoing his fly as he entered, but he made no move to stop her walking out. Then he closed the door after her.

She was alone in the room. Now's your chance, Inga. Be a hero. Now's your opportunity. Push the elevator button. Find a weapon while you wait. She looked around. A weapon, a weapon, a weapon.

The elevator door opened, then, and Travis stepped out, almost knocked her over. His face was flushed and his uniform was dull with dust. "Everything looks good," he said over her head to Molok, who was just coming out of the lavatory. "I think everything is running smoothly. All proceeding according to plan."

Inga backed away from him, breathing rapidly, and sat down hard on the floor, with her back against the wall and a vacuum-sealed kilo of hypervitaminized protein powder in her hand. Not much of a deadly weapon. She tapped the corner against her knee, and the foil crumpled in on itself. Molok grinned.

Travis ran his fingers through his hair, which raised a cloud of pale dust. He blinked, and scowled, and went into the lavatory, locking the door behind him.

A few minutes later the passenger and the man who was not the knife man stepped out of the elevator. Garrett, his name is Garrett. Inga stared at the floor, stole glances at the two men but tried not to let them catch her at it, tried not to move, tried to blend in, like a rabbit, and she did her best to think invisible rabbit thoughts.

When he came out again his hair was perfectly arranged. His uniform was neat and clean, and his boots had been shined. Quite right, she thought, let's all try and look our very best for Blake.

"Come and eat, Inga," the passenger said, slicing open a package with a thin blade. "Keep your strength up."

"If you ask nicely I'll give you something to wash it down with," Garrett said, and made an unsubtle gesture.

She stood up, and came to the table, and ate her food with much more restraint this time, more decorously, chewing, sipping some water between each mouthful. She thought about how much better it would taste mixed together as the directions on the packages suggested. Watered down, heated over a fire. She imagined the look on her father's face as he took his first mouthful of that glorious meal.

When they brought out the cards she moved back to the wall, and sat with her arms on her knees and her head hanging down, for hours it seemed, listening to them play the game until the words were no longer words, more an odd sort of song, with playing-card percussion.

Blake. Roj. Don't call me Roj, he'd said. Please. Everyone calls me Blake. I'm not two people, why do I need two names? And a number, as well.

Her father had shrugged and nodded in bemused agreement, acquiescence at any rate, and had done his best thereafter to call the boy Blake.

You know, he had said, you don't have it all that bad here, Ushton. Better than Earth these days, believe it or not, when you add it all up. I think you could make a go of it here, if you tried to rely a bit less on the Federation's generosity.

She smiled, remembering suddenly with photographic clarity the priceless look on her father's face, as he tried to decide just where to begin tearing such a pronouncement apart.

And then she remembered what Blake looked like. What he had looked like in that instant at least. The colour of his eyes.

She remembered that her father had found himself somehow unable to dispute the boy's lunatic ravings. Her father, of all people, rendered speechless. As opposed to stubbornly silent. And her quiet smiling mother had brought all of them something to eat, and then she'd sat down to listen as well, while Blake told them how the people of Exbar would not only survive, they would prosper. There was no question about it. No doubt in his eyes at all.

It's not all that bad here, Inga. Blake will say. You don't have it all that bad here. And then Travis will take him to the edge of the cliff, and put that gun to the back of his head, and he will fire.

She started to cry again, silently.

Eventually she heard a change in the rhythm of the sounds outside her head, and understood that the card players other than Travis were leaving, to sleep or go out on patrol.

"Come for a ride with us, Inga," the passenger called as the elevator door closed. "I'll let you sit on my lap."

She kept her eyes down, until they were gone, and after. She focused her attention on the tears falling to the floor between her knees, a slow drip but hypnotically steady.

"Time to go to sleep," Travis said. "Come and take your medicine." He rattled the bottle of sedative pills. She looked up at him, then hung her head again, but other than that she didn't move.

"Come on," he said, calm and reasonable, "you've been so pleasant all day, now you want to end it with a bloody nose, you fucking useless stupid fucking cunt?" The flow of tears increased on cue, drip drip drip, and she stood up slowly, stiff from the hours spent sitting so still.

"I need to use the toilet first," she said. Eyes down. Asked him.

"Be my guest."

She stared at herself in the mirror, red nose, eyes swollen halfway blind. Just at the moment she would have liked to die regardless of whether or not it would save anybody, do anyone any good at all. But the feeling passed.

She sighed, willed the tears to slow, if not stop, and splashed water from the faucet up onto her face. It stung like alcohol.

She'd best come out on her own, she decided, not wait for him to knock. But when she opened the door she found him preoccupied, perfectly patient apparently, sitting at the table and shuffling the deck of cards, shuffling and reshuffling, as if it were the most entertaining activity he had ever happened upon. He had undressed for sleep, down to his black undershirt and a pair of black shorts of the same material.

"Come on, come here," he said, without looking up from the cards, and she walked over to him, slowly.

He picked up the deck in his left hand and tapped it neat and smooth against the tabletop. He had taken the glove off, but reattached the yellow crystal. She tried not to look, she knew it was rude.

He held the deck out in front of her. "You know how to play fifty-two pickup?" he asked.

She shook her head.

He squeezed the deck between bare plastic thumb and fingers until it bent, bent further, then bent a bit too far, and the cards all flew up in a chaotic cloud, and fell to the floor, where everything else was. He looked up at her and smiled. The muscles of his neck strained as though supporting a great weight. "It's a joke," he said.

She nodded.

He shrugged, and stood up.

"Go ahead, stare," he said irritably. "Do you really care what I think of you?"

She shook her head, closed her eyes, concentrated on not crying, not right now. She swallowed, breathed, deep, calm. And when he wrapped his fingers around her wrist she let her hand hang limp. Didn't pull, didn't fight, didn't even open her eyes.

He loosened his grip. "You *are* behaving yourself tonight," he said. He was close to her now, touching her, barely, smelling of sweat and soap. There was the merest pressure, his chest against hers, much warmer than the rest of the room.

She didn't move, except to breathe as quietly as she could.

He lifted her well-behaved hand and shoved it in under the waistband of his shorts, down the tight supportive front panel of them. The skin there was warmer and softer than his hand, or hers, and her fingers pushed down through warm soft coarse hair, his palm cupping the back of her hand, his fingers guiding hers around him and smearing her palm around the slippery tip. An awkward way to masturbate, she thought. But she let him move her hand, let it all slip and slide, with her eyes closed, mouth open, and she kept it there, kept moving, uncertainly, after he let go of her.

"Much better," he said. "Much more pleasant." Yes, he certainly is, she thought. Maybe he's taken some sort of pleasant pill.

He came closer, put his right arm around her and brought her closer, made contact all up and down their bodies. She could feel his thighs and his stomach, and his collarbone, all the warm hard parts of him pressed against her. And he used his left hand, which was hard but not warm, to lift up her chin, and she kept her eyes closed, still.

His dry lips touched hers, moved against hers, slipped and slid over hers. Dry and soft, like chalk against chalk on the top of the cliff they were on, chalk underfoot sliding suddenly loose, rolling down to the riverbed far below. He pushed the tip of his tongue into her mouth. The illusion of solidity beneath your feet completely vanishes, with a sound that's more inside your skull than under your heels, your knees, your fingertips, clawing and scrabbling but everything's sliding, sliding past your teeth and touching your tongue, and the roof of your mouth, your open mouth, sliding down to the riverbed. Everything frictionless smooth, slick with spit, rolling all the way down to smash on the round rocks that sit wet and smooth and hard in the little trickle of a stream of a river that makes its way along the very lowest part of the valley, makes its way down to an old undrinkable sea.

He shifted away from her, and pulled his shorts down a bit, better access, and the back of her hand, exposed, felt clammy and cold. Then he broke the kiss, and the air was cold on the acidic wetness around her mouth as well. She shivered and thought of the warm grey blankets waiting in the corner.

"Are we going to lie down?" she asked. "Are you going to fuck me?"

"What sort of language is that? I thought you liked to pretend to be civilized." He said it in a light mocking manner, and yet his erection began rapidly softening in her hand.

"Don't you want to?" she asked him. Bewildered, again.

"I don't think the water you drink around here has been properly treated for that," he said.

She stared up at him, blank.

He licked his lips. "You might get pregnant."

She laughed. First time in a while. Bitter, but still, she laughed.

"No, I don't want to," he said. Then he kissed her again, and it warmed her where she had been growing cool, wet the parts that had been starting to dry. And she slip slid her hand up and down and around while he kissed her, but it melted the more she moved, until it felt like something rotten, something dead clenched in her fingers, at which time she stopped, and sighed, and stepped aside.

"I'm getting cold," she said. "Can I please lie down?"

He smiled, half-smiled, and gestured with his right hand toward the nest of blankets in the corner. The left hand pulling his underwear back up, adjusting, arranging things. I'd be deathly afraid it would go off by accident, she thought as she walked to the wall. Explode, or something, I'd be so afraid. I wouldn't be able to sleep.

She shivered again, pulled two blankets up over herself, squinted at Travis. He didn't seem bothered by the cold. Standing in his underwear, wholly focused now on opening his bottle of pills.

Presently he came over to her and squatted down beside her, the pill held delicately between his plastic thumb and finger, as it had been yesterday, or it might have been the day before. Her jaw clenched tight at the sight despite her ordering herself not to resist, and tears started to drain down the back of her throat, made her gag.

He shook his head, and put the pill down carefully on a plastic wrapper near her head. "Hard to believe you're related," he said, quietly, and it didn't sound anything like a compliment. She offered no response, no reaction.

An ankle or some other joint cracked loudly as he shifted his weight to his knees, and he shook his head again at the way she twitched. He pushed the blankets off her legs and slid his hand up her thigh, found the top of her itchy knitted underwear and slipped his hand inside, pulled it down from the inside, trousers and all, past her knees, over her ankles, turning inside out as they came off over her moccasins. "Is that better?" he asked. She nodded. He nodded back, and set the tangle of clothing aside. He positioned his right knee between her thighs, and slid his hand up her leg again.

Inga nodded, again, watching the left hand, feeling the right. Feeling one finger of the right hand slide into her, and then another, and feeling the thumb all the while circle round and round and round; watching the left hand ease his waistband down again, and he touched himself as she had touched him, and moved as she had tried to move, but he was plainly more practiced at it. White fingers as slick and hard as riverbed rock clamped tight around himself. His knucklebones were silvery metal, revealed when the plastic was bent at a sharp enough angle, and the complicated components of his wrist were slick cylinders of the same stuff, delicate and strong. The hand moved up and down smooth and steady, like an elaborate part of an even more elaborate machine. Like the mining equipment there'd been all up and down the river valley when she was a child, and the gruesome cautionary accompanying tales of lost limbs, lost eyes, lost lives. I have been impaled on the machine, she thought, and she pushed up, pushed his fingers in deeper. Help me, I am caught in the machine.

He responded to her pushing, bared his teeth. His right hand moved faster, more aggressively, knuckles on bone. The left kept its own pace.

Finally, abruptly, something gave way. Then everything did. She arched up and gasped as though taken by surprise, and her toes curled, and her flesh clenched tight around his fingers as if to trap him, pull him all the way in, drag him under. But he freed himself from her without difficulty, and moved his hand to rest on the other side of her body, support himself, and he stretched forward, pressed himself down half on top of her, brought his face down close to hers, stared into her wide rabbit eyes. His fist rubbed against the lower part of her leather tunic, and the tunic rubbed against her leg, and the pace and the violence of his movements increased, and increased, and then suddenly stopped. He came on her clothing, with a heavy exhalation and a childishly triumphant smile.

"Hm," he said, and rolled off, turned his back to her.

Now. Do something. Anything. Claw out his eye when he looks back this way, and you can run while he's blind. Take the blue bottle of pills from the table. Take the elevator up, not down, up, that's where they took the recording. That's where the transmitter will be. It must be simple to figure out how to use. They're not that bright. Do it.

Do it now.

He rolled over to face her again.

Now!

She clenched her fists at her sides, and closed her eyes. His fingers entered her unresisting mouth, stuck the sedative under her tongue to dissolve in an instant tasteless tingle.

Now.

He bent close and kissed her carefully, keeping his lips tight shut, and then he got up and left her lying there, alone.

 


End file.
